Historiography in the Twentieth Century:
From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge

Georg G. Iggers

In Historiography in the Twentieth Century Iggers offers a broad account
of trends and changes in modern approaches to history. One hundred and
sixty pages doesn't allow room for systematic exposition or analysis,
but he achieves some depth by highlighting key schools and prominent
individuals.

The story begins with classical historicism, Ranke, and the
professionalisation of historical studies.

"Ranke ultimately became the model for professionalized historical
scholarship in the nineteenth century. Before 1848, however,
he was not at all typical of German, and even less so of
international, historiography."

Around the end of the century, criticisms came in Germany from Karl
Lamprecht, targeting a narrow emphasis on the state, people and events,
and in the United States from the "New Historians" set out to write
progressive history for a democratic society.

One of the major themes of twentieth century history has been the
influence of the social sciences. Iggers devotes chapters to economic
and social history in Germany (Weber and historical sociology), American
traditions of social history, the Annales in France, "historical
social science" in post-war Germany, and Marxist historical science in
the Soviet bloc and in Britain.

"many historians in the Annales circle were fascinated by social
science approaches that promised firm, objective knowledge.
Braudel's emphasis on long enduring structures and on the
material foundations of culture were not free of this scientism.
Yet there was a firmly established tradition, extending from
Bloch and Febvre to Le Goff, Duby, and to the present, that
relied heavily on sources such as art, folklore, and customs and
therefore encouraged more subtle, qualitative ways of thinking."

"The place of History Workshop in the historiography of the past
two decades should not be overstated. It was one of a number
of journals internationally that took a similar direction.
It recognised its debt to Past and Present but from the
beginning went further in the direction of popular history and
culture and attempted, even if with limited success, to recruit
common people."

Turning to the challenge of postmodernism, Iggers first covers the
increasing focus on the history of everyday life. Here he highlights
Carlo Ginzburg and the Italian microstoria tradition, work done
in Germany, and connections with and differences from Geertzian
interpretative anthropology.

A chapter on "the linguistic turn" focuses on North America, looking at
Hayden White, Clifford Geertz, Thomas Childers, and work on the history
of political thought, the French Revolution, and the role of symbols and
social language. Iggers argues that the emphasis of postmodernism on
"the impact of language, rhetoric, and symbolic behavior" has to be
taken seriously, but that it lends itself more to literary criticism
than history, with the more extreme "only language exists" position
shared by few historians.

This 2005 edition adds an epilogue to the original 1997 work, in which
Iggers considers some of the macrohistorical ideas associated with the
end of the Cold War and aspects of historical studies in the non-Western
world.

Iggers clearly has his biases: his presentation sometimes seems slanted
and others might have chosen to emphasise different historians and
different works. But he is straight-forward and transparent, he
covers the most obvious topics, and he makes no pretence that he's
being comprehensive.

When it's possible to major in history at a leading university and
never have heard of Ranke or the Annales, a short, accessible survey
of modern historiography demands a place in undergraduate teaching.
Historiography in the Twentieth Century is also an obvious choice
for anyone else wanting to understand how approaches to history have
changed over the last century and a half.